Eat my Thoughts

So if you saw an awkward figure staggering around Kingston this morning, it wasn't Harley Bennell enjoying the off season. It was me testing out my knee in one of my first attempted walks since my injury in July. While the success of the walk itself was questionable, I noticed something else uplifting.

Everyone I saw walking or running in the opposite direction gave a friendly smile in response to mine. It could be argued they were just happy to be walking the other way to me, but I choose to go with the more likely possibility that people are generally nice to each other when they have the chance- even to people they don't know.

So after choosing his religious beliefs over the will of the Australian people in stifling Marriage Equality; and choosing cronyism over decency in refusing to remove national embarrassments such as Peter Dutton and Bronwyn Bishop, Tony Abbott was finally removed by his own party earlier this week. public reaction was mixed. Some seem to expect new Prime Minster Turnbull to work the miracle of pulling humane, progressive policies out of his Coalition government. I won't speculate too much here, other than to say lets wait and see. There was also a lot of outcry about the impropriety of the Liberal Party removing its own leader without the public's consent. While in a Westminster system it is true that technically most of the public do not vote for the Prime Minister, it is also true that they knew what their local vote went towards so in some sense they were. But the outrage in some circles surprised me. When a leader continually breaks their promises and fails to act in the interest of his party or his people to the extent that Abbott did, it would seem that his party was obliged to remove him. One might also argue that in their consistent dissatisfaction with Abbott in the opinion polls, the public did have a chance to vote and did so emphatically.

The scenes in Germany this morning of Germans turning up to welcome refugees and give them gifts was so uplifting. Wonderful also to see wealthy clubs such as Bayern Munich and Real Madrid pledging money to support resettlement of refugees. I don't want to draw comparison to how other nations and people are responding. I am in the midst of writing a more detailed piece about refugees, but had to make a comment while the impression was fresh in my mind.